Posts in Category: logical increments updates

This week, AMD launched their exciting Ryzen 5 CPUs, which include two 6-core hyperthreaded chips (the 1600X and 1600) and two 4-core hyperthreaded chips (the 1500X and 1400). These CPUs are now among our recommendations on the Logical Increments homepage, marking a welcome return for AMD to the mid-range CPU space.

Long story short: We have added the the R5 1500X and 1600 to our Great tier, while the R5 1600 and 1600X now appear in our Excellent tier. As a result, the Ryzen chips have shaken up our once Intel-dominated mid-range CPU recommendations, and knocked the Intel i5-7400 completely off our list.

Just two weeks following its official announcement, the GTX 1080 Ti has launched at $700, replacing the Titan X Pascal on the highest end of our graphics card recommendations. Simply put: It is the new king of graphics cards, inching out ahead of the $1,200 Titan X in overall gaming performance. On average, the new 1080 Ti is 2-3% faster than the Titan X, while priced $500 lower.

We have added the 1080 Ti to our GPU recommendations in the Exceptional, Enthusiast, Extremist, and Monstrous tiers on our homepage.

Kaby Lake has now replaced all of the Skylake CPUs except for some low-end Skylake Celerons in our Minimum tier. (Since H210 motherboards are not out yet, we cannot find suitable motherboards for Kaby Lake Celerons.)

Kaby Lake is the first CPU series under Intel’s new Tick-Tock-Tack strategy (a.k.a Process, Architecture, Optimization). Previously, Intel would shrink it’s last generation’s CPU (a Tick), and then introduce a new microarchitecture at that size in the next generation (a Tock). Now Intel shrinks a CPU (Tick), makes a new microarchitecture (Tock), then “optimizes” it. What does “optimize” mean? That is left up to the reader to decide, as “optimize” is not defined by Intel.

The day has come for even more AMD CPUs to be removed from our PC parts guide, to be replaced with Core i3 alternatives. We do not want to see AMD represented less and less on our guide, but we have no choice until they have a new release. Our Good and Very Good tiers have been updated to recommend Intel Core i3 builds, replacing AMD’s Vishera CPUs in that price range.